


voulez-vous

by honey_butter



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Loosely Canon Compliant, M/M, Major Spoilers, Prequel, Sort Of, The Ravening War, Vignette, everyone else is in this too i just dont want to clog up the tags with too many characters, it ends when acoc begins, multiple vignettes actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 00:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30063924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_butter/pseuds/honey_butter
Summary: The first time Calroy thought about killing Amethar, he was watching the prince ride by on his horse.Snapshots of Calroy and the Rocks family in the years leading up to their trip to Comida.
Relationships: Calroy Cruller & Everyone, Calroy Cruller/Amethar Rocks
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	voulez-vous

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i finally finished my calmethar fic!!
> 
> okay so a few things first: this is just chock full of spoilers for all of acoc, but also i did pretty much whatever i wanted with the timeline so it might not be entirely canon compliant. there is some nonexplicit sexual content in here (in the third vignette if you would like to skip it), i just think they got up to things during the war but it's all left pretty vague and the descriptions are more about emotions than actual actions.
> 
> title is from voulez-vous by abba because i think a stage production of acoc should have songs from the mamma mia soundtrack.

The first time Calroy thought about killing Amethar, he was watching the prince ride by on his horse. 

The stench of war—men and sweat and shit—was nearly unbearable, clogging up Calroy’s nose in a way that even the more unsavory sides of Candia hadn’t come close to.

Prince Amethar of the House of Rocks, heads taller than all of the assembled men even without the mount, was gleaming in the sunlight. His armor, clean and shiny and expensive, nearly blinded Calroy, whose own flesh was protected by cheap, standard issue leather. A giant sword sat strapped to his back, leaps and bounds ahead of the flimsy weapons Calroy’s company had been assigned. 

A knight followed closely behind him, also shining but looking much more concerned about it, like he was actually trying to live up to this gleaming standard. 

That’s what made Calroy immediately hate the prince. He was so unbothered by what he had, so unbothered with the mud and filth that Calroy had been surrounded by since arriving at this camp, since the moment he was born.

Calroy could maybe do it, could hurl a dagger fast enough to hit the flesh of the prince’s neck, could find a chink in the armor and strike precisely enough to slice an artery. As long as the knight didn’t have any healing, the prince would be gone within seconds—fallen off the side of the horse and into the mud, that armor dulled and dirtied and no longer so perfect.

Calroy could do it. His fingers curled around the hilt of the throwing knife strapped to his thigh, the one he’d brought from home that was actually sharp enough to slice rock candy. The prince turned back to look at his knight, saying something Calroy couldn’t catch, and as he did so Calroy caught his gaze. Brown eyes under heavy green brows, furrowed with some unknown frustration.

Fingers tightening around the throwing dagger, Calroy lowered his own brow at the prince. And then he winked.

For a second, Calroy was convinced the prince was choking, and an odd thrill found its way into his heart, and then he realized that the prince was  _ laughing. _ At  _ him. _

Calroy sweetened the deal by allowing himself to smirk, just enough to be unmistakable from Amethar’s distance.

And, yes. That was definitely laughter.

_ Interesting. _ Calroy forced his fingers to unfurl from the dagger’s hilt. There were better alternatives to a fast death.

  
  
  
  


“Is that the best you’ve got?”

Amethar, apparently, didn’t like his armor anymore than Calroy did. He ditched it as often as he could, even in the training pit. Especially in the training pit. He wasn’t wearing a shirt now, all sugary sweat dripping off of carved muscles as he raised wrapped fists at the crowd of gathered men. Two of Calroy’s company were already knocked out cold on the ground—nonlethal damage, of course—and the rest of the men didn’t seem too keen to jump in.

One of Calroy’s greatest strengths was lurking, sticking to the shadows to slip a knife or an idea into the right person. But another was more plain than that, out in the open and clear as the crystalline sugar of Amethar’s sclera. The real threat was what that obviousness disguised.

Calroy shouldered his way to the ring, unbuckling his baldric and belt as he went.

“You really up for more?” He asked, dropping the belts and their assorted weapons on the chest of his fallen compatriot, and crouching down into a fighting stance.

Amethar let out a full body laugh, more giddy than anything, “Hey! I know you.”

“Lord Calroy Cruller, Marquis of Muffinfield,” Calroy said, bowing slightly while maintaining his stance. They’d met before, multiple times, at court functions and the like—Amethar had even attended Calroy’s wedding—but Calroy hadn’t been able to get a foothold with him yet.

“Lord?” Amethar exclaimed, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Why’re you in here?”

Calroy stuck his chin out, “I could ask you the same.”

“I’m commanding this company,” Amethar laughed again. Calroy had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping. “You’re… dressed like an average soldier.”

“Something against average soldiers, your highness?”

“Now, I didn’t say that, uh, what’d you say your name was again?”

“Lord Calroy Cruller.”

“Right, right. I didn’t say that, Cal. Just surprised is all.”

“Are we going to keep talking ourselves in circles, or do you plan to fight me before the war ends?”

Amethar laughed again, “You know, I think I like you.”

And then he swung a solid fist at Calroy’s face.

Calroy ducked and bobbed around the prince’s wild swings, opting to keep his own arms tucked in close to have more chances for dodging. 

Amethar huffed and Calroy sidestepped around to his back and Amethar started laughing again. “Okay, I  _ really _ like you, Cal.”

“It’s my pleasure, your highness,” Calroy said, slightly out of breath.

He ducked under Amethar’s outstretched arm and delivered a swift punch to his gut, right over the organs. Amethar doubled over, winded, and Calroy took the opportunity to shake out his hand.

“What do they feed you in the castle to make you so solid?” Calroy asked, looking out at the watching crowd to try and involve them.

A tentative laugh swept up from the men, and Calroy smiled roguishly.

“Whatever it is, you need more of it,” Amethar responded, and Calroy wasn’t paying enough attention to dodge his next hit.

Amethar caught him right across the jaw, painful and jarring and Calroy felt so  _ alive. _ He stopped himself from falling by falling into a roll, springing back up to jab Amethar in the side again. There was no way he could win this match by brute strength, Amethar would wipe the floor with him if he even so much as tried, so he continued his strategy of dodging, wearing Amethar out, keeping him just off balanced enough to land a few hits every now and again.

Calroy had started to drum up the crowd—another of his talents. There were whoops from the men now, cheers and laughter accompanying every blow.

The battle ended after Amethar, panting and struggling to stay upright as Calroy wove around him, leaned too hard to his left and caught Calroy’s fist in his already-bumpy nose. Blood spurted and Calroy watched, breath coming heavy, as the prince fell to the ground in a cloud of dust and limbs.

“Prince Amethar!”

Amethar’s knight burst through the crowd. Calroy watched the gears turn as he clocked Amethar’s prone body and Calroy’s raised fist, and he had to bite back a cruel smile when the knight decided that drawing his sword was the right option.

“Halt! For striking the prince you, uh—”

“Theo, dude. Look around,” Amethar said from the ground, disappointingly still conscious. Apparently he had more hit points than Calroy had thought, he’d have to remember that. “It was just a friendly spar.”

The knight wavered, his sword still raised, “Your nose is broken, your highness.”

“Yeah, it’s fine, Theo, really. Cal, help me up?” Amethar lifted his hand and clasped Calroy’s arm, nearly pulling him over with the weight of his body. “That was fun, Cal. That was really fun.”

“As I said, it’s my pleasure.”

Amethar still had his arm clasped with Calroy’s and the knight, Theo, cleared his throat. Amethar dropped his hand quickly, scratching the back of his neck in a gesture unbecoming of a prince of the realm.

“My prince, Archmage Lazuli has written,” Theo said, clearing his throat again. “The letter is in your tent.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to it.” Calroy was pleased to see how miffed Theo was at the dismissal. “Hey, Cal, you wanna have dinner with us?”

“I would be honored, your highness.”

A soldier, someone Calroy had been bunked near, handed his weapons to him with a slight bow.  _ Ah, _ so that part of the plan had worked as well. He received more nods and claps on the back from his fellow men as he walked away at the prince’s side. Calroy didn’t bother to hide his smile now. He’d won more than a fistfight here, and he was the only one who knew it.

  
  
  
  


_ “Cal.” _

Amethar was pitiful, even like this. A battle had just ended, well, it had ended nearly forty-eight hours ago, but Calroy had just returned from his covert meetings with both his Ceresian contacts and his Candian men. He’d never explained to Amethar the truth of why he had originally given up the command position befitting his title, instead opting for a tale of honor and virtue that even the knight appreciated. Really, the decision had been easy. To regain his passed opportunity, he’d figured it would only be a matter of time before someone like Amethar came along—young, dumb, and easily manipulated—and Calroy stood to gain more from spending time among the men than their leaders, anyway. That time had given him a contingent of soldiers willing to make a pretty gold piece for secrecy and, what some but certainly not Calroy might consider, treason.

He had to keep up those contacts, though. Which meant checking in with each of the men individually, keeping track of who died, who was slowly starting to lose their grasp on reality, who hadn’t returned from the trenches yet. So, Calroy returned to his tent nearly two days after the fighting ceased, ready to sleep for as long as it took until someone came to wake him up, only to find Amethar already seated on the edge of his bed.

Calroy had swallowed his sigh, reset the tired slump of his shoulders, and climbed into Amethar’s lap.

There was an easiness to this that even Calroy couldn’t deny. His immediate feelings about these interactions with Amethar were of annoyance—they stopped him from getting to sleep, from responding to letters, from doing a million other things that required tending to. Internally, he critiqued the way Amethar kissed him, rolled his eyes at the scrambling grab of his hands, flinched at just how much Amethar wanted this. He only allowed himself to recognize those emotions, and pushed down the way his chest ached when he was this close to Amethar, the way he tried to fit all of him into the palms of his hands and the curve of his lips because he couldn’t bare even a millimeter of distance between them.

None of that was practical, though, so he focused on the annoyance.

Amethar was a talker, which would be fine, fun even, if they weren’t at war and if Calroy wasn’t married. Thinking about Donetta while tangled up with Amethar like this never failed to startle a snort from him. Her sardonic responses to his letters where he detailed such encounters always amused him, and he was constantly reminded of just how grateful he was of her. 

(Calroy was grateful of Amethar, too. Those feelings sat nestled even deeper than the desperation.)

Amethar was also completely neutral, in bed, and Calroy wasn’t quite good enough yet at rewriting his thoughts to stop the recognition that his times with Amethar would barely be a blip on Calroy’s radar if not for the fact that Amethar was Amethar and Calroy begrudgingly held him on some strange pedestal above everyone else.

Calroy knew that there were other men, other women, that Amethar brought to his bed during the long stints Calroy would slip away on personal or official business. He knew, even, that Amethar had taken Theo to bed at least once, the mental picture of which was a constant source of amusement. Calroy was not jealous in the way he knew Amethar would be if he learned of the Ceresian commander that comprised a good amount of Calroy’s personal business. He was not jealous in precisely the same way he didn’t purposely leave bruises and nail marks for Amethar to remember him by.

Sometimes, when his teeth were at the flesh of Amethar’s neck and sweet crystal broke off and fizzed on the tip of his tongue, he would imagine biting down deeper, harder, until candy shattered and broke under his jaw. He would imagine leaning over and finding his discarded boot, finding the hidden dagger tucked away inside, and sliding it into Amethar’s ribs, right up into his warm heart. He would imagine a million different scenarios; smothering him with a pillow, garrotting him with a discarded bow string, any and all ways to finally shut him up.

Calroy held himself back. He kept the knives out of his line of sight, kept his teeth from biting too hard, kept his hands from squeezing too much.

Calroy held himself back and let Amethar blabber on despite the too thin walls of his war tent, let him kiss Calroy in a fumbling and immature fashion, let him push Calroy too fast so that everything was tinged by just a hint of pain. It made Amethar happy with him, and when Amethar was happy with him Calroy was just that much safer.

Calroy dug his nails into his palms and buried his head in Amethar’s shoulder to hide his smirk. He’d waited this long, he could hold off just a few more years, until Amethar was no longer useful.

Yes. Just a few more years.

  
  
  
  


The war went on and on and on, and Calroy and House Cruller became richer and richer.

He was careful, always. Cunning and smart and sure of his every move before he took it. It became harder to gauge the actions of those around him when Rococoa, Lazuli, and Sapphria were around—Citrina was almost always away with the church, sequestered off somewhere with Belizabeth Brassica. When he was feeling maudlin and a little too drunk on cola wine, Calroy would muse about inviting Belizabeth to tea with him and Caramelinda, just to see the two of them tear each other apart.

Calroy was careful, but the longer the war went on, the greater the risk of discovery grew. He knew Sapphria didn’t like him, knew because she’d tripped him the first time she met him, sent him sprawling into the camp’s muddy ground.

“We are similar, you and I,” she’d said, smirking down at him, the tip of her boot digging painfully into his shoulder. “Similar but not the same. Do not turn my brother into someone like us.”

Calroy had gnawed on his tongue and blinked innocently up at her, “Whatever do you mean, your highness?”

The boot ground down and he felt something pop out of place. “Remember my warning, Lord Cruller.”

He made sure not to be in a room alone with her after that.

The Archmage and General liked him, though. Lazuli was a bit too wise for his tastes, but not enough of a nuisance to bother getting rid of. Despite all of Sapphria’s bluster, Lazuli knew what Sapphria did not, and, while Calroy recognized the danger in allowing that knowledge to live on, she’d left him alone for this long. She had a way of speaking that was circuitous and headache-inducing, and, while her sisters all recognized her wisdom, they disregarded half of the things that came from her mouth.

Sometimes, Lazuli would look at Calroy, and would smile, and Calroy’s blood would run cold and his fingers would itch for his rapier. Sometimes, Lazuli would look at Calroy, and her face would be so painfully blank that Calroy would have to fight the urge to flick her on the forehead, just to see if she was still there.

He disliked Lazuli the most.

Rococoa was warm, the strategen to her brother’s brute strength. She wrote to Amethar the most often, and Calroy fielded her battle plans willingly, at least more willingly than with any of the others.

She made sure to leave little notes for Calroy in her letters, small jokes and asides that he left out when reading them to Amethar. They had the tone of a commander checking in on her men, like a warm and sure arm around the shoulders, like a… like an older sister.

Calroy was back at Castle Candy, after nearly three months behind enemy lines in Fructera. It wasn’t his first choice of position—after being out of action for so long, he needed to double check on his supply rings, spend some time with the Ceresians again—but Rococoa had practically forced him to return home, and it would be more suspicious if he insisted against the much needed break.

Amethar wasn’t there, away with their allies in the Dairy Islands just as he had been for the month and a half  _ before _ Calroy went further into the field. He wrote occasionally, with a hand that was not his own, and Rococoa had given Calroy a stack of letters to go with the order back to Candia.

Sometimes, the writing would be  _ much _ ruder than Calroy expected from Amethar. Never directly about Calroy, of course—Amethar may be extremely improper and inept but he knew when to hold his tongue—but rather of his various conquests across the Isles. Other times, it was uptight and much closer to Rococoa’s missives. Calroy often wondered, wandering the halls of his enemy’s castle, what Amethar was doing in the Dairy Islands, if he was enjoying himself, if he was taking care of himself, if the knight was with him or not. He always came to the conclusion that it did not matter, because Amethar’s feelings did not matter, in the long run. How could they, when Calroy was going to kill him one day?

One such night, when Calroy was walking from his room in the visitors’ wing to the courtyard below, he was interrupted by the staggering figure of Lazuli, stumbling down the hallway. He gnawed on the inside of his cheek and steeled himself for dealing with her.

“Archmage?” Calroy asked, reaching out to her and grasping her elbow, steadying her.

“What? Oh,  _ oh, _ Calroy. Yes, yes. Very good.”

“What’s wrong?”

(Calroy would learn, later, that these episodes became more and more frequent towards the end of the Archmage’s life, as if her gift was trying to cram as much as it could into her mind before she was turned into a heap of ash on a scorched battlefield.)

“Jet. Make sure you tell Jet she did all she could,” Lazuli said earnestly, clutching at Calroy’s arm now to prevent him from pulling away. “Or. No. Well, maybe. If things happen one way, tell her that, if things happen another… Please push him, Calroy.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Something in Calroy’s heart was beating too fast, and he felt short of breath. Was Lazuli using some sort of magic on him? Twisting his thoughts and forcing his heart to betray him?

“It’s the only way, you see. Oh, and do show Ruby the disappearing trick.”

“Who? Archmage, who are you talking about?”

Lazuli nodded to herself and patted Calroy’s arm once more before pulling completely away, standing back up to her towering, imperious height. “Care to accompany me to dinner, Lord Cruller?”

Calroy was a very eloquent man. Words spilled from his lips with practiced aim, as deadly as the point of his rapier. Calroy was not a man who stuttered, or stumbled over his words, because there was nothing more dangerous than a slip of the tongue. Calroy stuttered now, for just a moment. “I… You… What is, I mean, what do you… I— Yes. Yes, Archmage, dinner sounds lovely.”

The corners of Lazuli’s mouth tipped up in a smile, “Warhead got your tongue?”

Calroy scoffed, affronted, before realizing what he had just done to the  _ Archmage _ and clamming up.

“Don’t worry, Calroy, it will all work out in time. Or it won’t. I… Yes. It most likely will.”

(Their encounter in the castle hallway was just about two months out, from Lazuli’s death, and she was already starting to slip away. Years later, Calroy would sit in tense silence with Caramelinda at the base of a blue statue and remember how they’d been losing Lazuli long before she made the decision to be a martyr.)

  
  
  
  


Even after years of war, Calroy had kept his wardrobe steadily in the range of whites and greys and blacks. Some purples here and there, for national pride, and browns, for Muffinfield, and, of course, outfits that blended in with Fructeran vineyards and Meat Land myoglobin.

Lazuli fell and Calroy received his first set of royal mourner’s clothes. Pink and frilly and everything Lazuli would have hated in life.

Calroy wished he didn’t know that.

Sapphria went next, her position compromised by Carnish assassins. Calroy hid his glee at the removal of that particular thorn in his side by another set of mourner’s clothes, finer than the last, as his position as Amethar’s aide-de-camp advanced without Lazuli between Amethar and the throne.

(“So many things would have to go wrong for this to matter,” Citrina muttered, in a room far away from Lord Cruller’s prying eyes.

“Never say never, Trine. I don’t like him,” Sapphria groused, adjusting the circlet on her head. “Why couldn’t Amethar pick literally anyone else?”

“I’ve already approved the change, consulting with all of you is merely out of respect.” Rococoa was bent over the war table, pushing small representations of armies around and chewing on her thumb.

“Wow, good to be included,” Sapphria said, before wincing as Rococoa pushed the small blue figurines representing Lazuli’s company into Fructera. “We’re really going that route? I don’t think Uvano is—”

Rococoa shot her a look, “It’s what Laz decided upon, I don’t stop your every hairbrained scheme.”

“Fine, fine.” A silence settled over them, as Citrina continued to scrawl in her book and Rococoa and Sapphria planned the movements of war. Eventually, the scratching and the scraping sounds of wood over parchment got to be too much and Sapphria circled back around to a safe conversation. “I just don’t like Cruller, is all. He rubs me the wrong way.”

“We know,” Rococoa and Citrina said in unison.

The silence resumed.)

Calroy had to physically stop his reaction when he heard the news about Citrina’s death.

Theo’s voice was calm, as he read the beginning of the letter, but Calroy should have known what was coming when his words died out into a quiet rasp, when Amethar had taken on the expression of a deer in torchlight and grabbed Theo by the shoulders and ordered him to finish reading. When Theo had been unable to do so.

Calroy hadn’t loved Citrina any more than he didn’t love Amethar but it was… No. They were at war. All of them. And sacrifices had to be made. Calroy was just lucky that this sacrifice brought him closer and closer to the throne, that this sacrifice was of someone dispensable, that this sacrifice would make Amethar more dependent upon him.

Calroy wasn’t prone to fits of emotion, at least fits of emotion like this, but days later, when Calroy received news of the event from his Bulbian contacts, he had to storm from his own tent once again.

Belizabeth Brassica had done what he could not. No. Had not. Not yet. Calroy would, one day. He couldn’t let Belizabeth one up him in that regard.

The report had said that Citrina’s body was ground up into crystal, by the time the dust had settled and the army had moved on, that her circlet was bent beyond recognition and her robes were a tattered mess of cloth. Calroy couldn’t picture the Citrina he knew looking like that, couldn’t picture it even more than he couldn't picture Lazuli’s scattered ashes or Sapphria’s vacant eyes.

Calroy allowed himself his reaction, allowed himself a walk into the woods by the camp in order to clear his head. He was sick, in the woods, too. Over and over again. Like the war was finally catching up with him and all the blood and shards of candy that stained his hands were finally trying to be known.

Calroy allowed himself his reaction until he got back to camp, until he made his way to Amethar’s tent and rested a hand on the prince’s back and said, with some of the first and last sincerity his tongue had ever tasted, “I’m sorry.”

Amethar cried that day, and Calroy held him, and he told himself that this was all worth it. This was helping him. This was what must be done to move himself along on his path to greatness.

That night, Calroy dreamed that it was he standing before the cathedral instead of Belizabeth Brassica. In his dream, Calroy threw up his finger, directing a contingent of the Muffinfield guard to attack the prince. In his dream, Calroy was standing at the top of a parapet, a knife pressed firmly into the prince’s back. In his dream, Calroy’s hands ran red with the prince’s blood and he laughed, giddy with it. In his dream, Calroy rid himself of this pain.

Calroy’s wardrobe was mostly pink after that.

  
  
  
  


It wasn’t long until Calroy was in over his head.

He’d known that things could get messy. As he got closer to the Rocks family, as he became trusted with their secrets. His power grew, but his risk grew as well. His letters were subject to “friendly” interception by any number of people—Rococoa, Theo, or any of the half dozen others in the royal family’s inner circle. He was no longer reliably left on his own, always being called on to confer with Amethar or Rococoa. He realized, belatedly, that it was to pick up the slack left by the absent three sisters. The war was winding down, they were winning, but it wasn’t over yet and Calroy could feel the constant demand for his presence, for his every thought, like a physical weight on his shoulders.

He was stupid and careless and everything he’d been so careful to avoid for so long.

He was stupid and he got caught.

He held onto Amethar’s arm while they lowered yet another casket of House Rocks into the ground. It had taken Amethar and Theo weeks to find her, because Calroy had been found out once and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. Amethar had described what her body had looked like with a sick sort of determination on his face—his sister turned to a puddle of half-melted candy, crawling with sugar ants.

“I’m alone now, Cal,” Amethar whispered, horribly, brutally, to Calroy while the Bulbian priest uttered words Rococoa hadn’t believed over her grave.

“I’m here, Amethar,” Calroy whispered back. “We’ll get through this.”

“Thank you, Cal.”

Calroy couldn't wait to see the look on the prince’s… no, the king’s face when he told him who was responsible for putting his last sister in the ground. In that moment, Calroy allowed himself to fall even further into the poison-tinged parts of his brain. There would be no redemption for him, because he did not need redeeming. The only thing he wished to change was the fact that the other three Rocks sisters had not fallen by his hand.

  
  
  
  


Jet and Ruby entered the world screaming.

(Calroy would be told, eighteen years later, that Jet left it gasping and unable to speak. He will think it fitting, even if something long dead will howl in his heart.)

In a flurry of poor decisions helped along by Calroy’s political insights and heavy hand, Amethar had married his sister’s widow two months after the war ended. They lived in tentative companionship for the first few weeks, honestly longer than Calroy expected, before Caramelinda began to keep her door tightly shut at night and Calroy began to darken Amethar’s bedchambers once again.

The twin princess’ birth was met by both delight and resignation from the Queen and King. There was a grand feast, and a parade through Dulcington, and then the rest of the princesses’ lives were planned.

In those first few years, Calroy played the role of the doting uncle. He took them from their wet nurse and cradled them against his chest while he went on walks around the castle. He gave Jet a play sword and Ruby a puppet for their second birthday. He took them on excursions in the woods, still within the walls of the castle and under the watchful eye of Theo. He made sure that Amethar saw all of this, and Caramelinda saw none, and he ingrained himself even further into these peoples’ lives.

Jet was a biter, from day one, even before she had teeth. Ruby was watchful and quiet, most of the time, although she was prone to fits of violence where she’d beat her little fists against the nearest sensitive area.

At the beginning, the princesses were relegated to the nursery, where they were raised under a cleric’s watchful eye, as was tradition among the nobility. After a few months, Amethar pulled them away every chance he got, bringing them to visit his sisters’ statues and to see their mother where she worked in the counsel room.

Calroy noted Caramelinda’s pinched mouth and the deepening crease between her brows and he redirected Amethar away from her when she was working.

Donetta learned to braid, in order to spend time with the princesses as well, and all four of them would spend long hours in the Crullers’ suite of rooms while Donetta did their hair in complex cornrows and goddess braids. His situation with Donetta was… odd. They were friends, of a sort, and she was his most trusted confidante, but she was below Amethar in the complex ranking of importance in Calroy’s head, and she knew it. Calroy told himself that it was because Donetta had already used up her usefulness and the King had more to give. Calroy told himself many things that weren’t necessarily true.

“Oh, what’s in here?” Ruby tugged on his hand furiously, trying to pull him to the side of the road.

They were walking in Dulcington, Jet on his right and Ruby on his left. He’s been trying to show them how royalty walk among the commoners, how to hold themselves and approach those lesser than them—it had quickly devolved into Calroy clinging to their hands for dear life, hoping against hope that he would not lose them on their first outing without Theo.

“Yes! I want to go too!” Jet crowed. Calroy thought his arms might get tugged out of their sockets.

“We are not—  _ Princesses, _ I am not taking you in that shop.”

“Awh, you’re no fun,” Ruby said, and then tried to twist her arm to escape.

He held firm and pulled her back, “That is not a place for children, and if you leave I  _ will _ tell the Queen.”

The shop in question was a tear away lingerie store, which the girls were probably drawn to because of the bright colors in the shop’s window. Despite his less than ingenuous intentions towards their family, Calroy wasn’t a bad enough uncle to let them go anywhere near that place unless it was directly away from it at a very brisk walk.

“What? Is she the boss of you?” Jet griped. She was great at these types of power trips. Calroy had trained her well.

“Technically, yes. She is the queen.”

Both princesses stuck their tongues out at him.

“Come along, I’ll take you to the flavored cola shop.”

Jet and Ruby hesitated, and then said something in their language of gibberish and song that always gave Calroy a headache.

Jet stuck her chin out, “Okay, but you have to get us  _ each _ our own cola.”

“On my word, princess.” Nevermind the fact that they were royalty and could order the shopkeep to make them individual drinks. If it worked in Calroy’s favor, he would withhold that information for as long as possible.

“Fine,” Ruby agreed, also trying to stick her chin out but with a much less intimidating result.

“After you, your highnesses,” Calroy said, dipping into as much of a bow as possible with both of his arms occupied.

Jet and Ruby grinned at each other and then at him. Calroy smiled back, and bit at his tongue to hide the water steel-sharp edge.

  
  
  
  


“Cal, you’re too nice to them.”

“I’m not.”

“You  _ are.” _

Amethar’s bedroom was dark, the colors of midnight stretching and shifting Calroy’s perception of the world. They lay in Amethar’s bed, Calroy wrapped up against Amethar’s chest and held so comfortably he teetered on the edge of sleep. Amethar’s words whispered into the nape of his neck and Calroy had to squeeze his eyes shut at the feeling.

“The girls…” Amethar said, one of his big hands sweeping up Calroy’s side. “They love you.”

“Oh,” Calroy said, because it was midnight and he’d had a long day and he was getting distracted by Amethar’s presence.

“They do. I…” Amethar trailed off again—he had a habit of doing that—and pressed a kiss to Calroy’s neck. “I love you.”

_ “Oh.” _

Amethar continued to sweep his hand up Calroy’s side, soothing him, and kissed his neck again, kissed the shell of his ear, the top of his head. “I know it’s stupid, you don’t have to say it or anything. We’re, hell, we’re too old for this shit. I just wanted to, yeah. I just wanted to tell you. In case somethin’ happens. My family, we don’t, uh, have the best track record, ya know.”

“Do you think something will happen?” Calroy asked, fighting to stay awake. If there was a threat to Candia other than himself, Calroy would have heard about it. But maybe the king’s friendship with Uvano was enough that he picked up on things even Calroy missed.

“No, no, nothin’ like that. Just, uh, just wanted to tell you.”

“Oh.”

“If something happens to me, take care of the girls. And Theo. And Cara. They’ll need you.”

“Stop talking like that.”

“I know, I know. But will you do it? For me?”

Calroy brought his hand up to grasp where Amethar’s rested at his side. “Anything for you.”

“Thank you, Cal. Thank you,” Amethar kissed him again, on the side of the neck now, leaning over him. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Calroy said, and drifted off.

He did not allow himself such weakness again.

  
  
  
  


There was work to be done, and the Wilhelmina boy was in the way.

Uvano was dying, had been for some time now, but things were  _ really _ beginning to take a turn for the worst, and Calroy had plans to prepare, troops to gather, and an entire empire’s worth of politicians to woo. Duke Jawbreaker’s son, however, did not understand any of that.

“And then I said to Preston, ‘Hey, what do you have there, buddy?’ And guess what he had. A seed! He found one! That’s just crazy, right?” The boy snorted, and looked to Calroy for approval.

“Yes, yes, very crazy,” Calroy said, forcing a fond smile onto his face.

“You’ve got to come seed searching with us someday, it’s  _ so _ fun.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Preston squealed.

“Like, maybe, next Tuesday? I can pencil you in, we’ve got a busy schedule,” Liam laughed again, picking Preston up from the ground and cradling him in a way that should be disgusting—Preston was a  _ pig, _ he was almost permanently covered in pudding mud—but was actually just cute.

“I’ll keep that in mind when preparing my plans for the week,” Calroy said, maintaining his smile.

“Sweet! You’re the best, Uncle Calroy,” Liam exclaimed, and then pulled Calroy into a hug, Preston sandwiched between them.

“Oh, um. Thanks. You are too, kid.” Calroy patted at Liam’s back carefully and tried to keep his face out of Preston’s snuffling range.

(Calroy would remember this moment later, when a wisp of a boy leveled an arrow at him. He would remember the feeling of Liam’s too-soft hair on his chin and the way his cheeks dimpled as he grinned. None of it would make a lick of difference when the boy’s eyes glow with a darkness and hunger not of this world.)

  
  
  
  


On the princesses’ eighteenth Saint’s Day, the Emperor Uvano was officially dying and the girls had managed to slip away from their lessons.

Calroy was surprised by neither fact.

He was on his way to collect Amethar from the statue hall—a task Caramelinda delegated to him when she was not in the mood for dealing with her husband, which was most of the time. The castle’s halls were bustling as preparations for the twins’ feast began in earnest, and Calroy had to sidestep tartguard, courtiers, and kitchen workers alike. The air was light with sugar and the Bulb’s light shone through the windows, dazzling everything in golds and yellows.

Calroy heaved in a long breath, lingering, for a moment, in the hallway before the door to where Amethar waited.

Things were changing. Soon enough, this would all be his.

Calroy rested his hand on the hilt of his rapier and slid into the room.

Amethar kneeled on the ground before the statue of Rococoa, dwarfed by the tootsie pop stone. His head was bowed, under the weight of his sparkling crown, and Calroy’s fingers tightened on his sword.

Soon. He had waited long enough.

The blank gazes of the Rocks sisters looked down upon him as he approached, letting his feet hit the ground harder than usual to alert Amethar to his presence.

“Who’s there?” Amethar called, head still bowed.

“Your majesty, I’m sorry to disturb…”

The Bulb’s light beamed from a stained glass window above Citrina’s head, illuminating the ground directly beside the King in pink-tinted light. Calroy took his place in the spotlight, and laid a heavy hand on the King’s back.

Amethar of House Rocks, First of his Name, Sovereign Ruler of Candia, and all of his other titles, looked up at Cal and smiled, a little watery.

_ Pathetic. _

Calroy rubbed Amethar’s back, and imagined that his hand held a dagger.

Soon Amethar would be Unfallen no longer and Calroy would have what he wanted, what he deserved.

Soon.

**Author's Note:**

> well. that's the fic. i'm proud of it for now, we'll see how long that lasts lol
> 
> the pink clothes thing is from my headcanon that candian mourning colors are pink (which i will stick to even though i know pink is one of the rocks family's house/candian national colors). i thought too much about how trench warfare would work between types of food and it doesn't show at all in the fic but it's important that i at least mention it here.
> 
> i'm on tumblr at [labelleofbelfastcity](https://labelleofbelfastcity.tumblr.com/) if you would like to stop by. don't be shy to leave a comment!! have an excellent day/night!!


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